Who this work is for

Most people don’t arrive saying “I have attachment trauma” or “I struggle with emotional regulation.” They arrive with something that gets in the way day to day and won’t resolve. It usually sounds more like:

Behind those words there’s often a long adaptation — to stress, instability, unpredictability, to environments where your own needs were easier not to notice. Many of the people I work with are self-aware, capable, and used to holding everything together. From the outside, fine. Underneath, chronic tension, emotional suppression, loneliness, or a nervous system that rarely fully settles.

What the work often touches

• chronic overwhelm, burnout, and exhaustion;
• hyper-independence and difficulty receiving support;
• emotional shutdown, numbness, feeling disconnected from yourself;
• people-pleasing, over-functioning, weak boundaries;
• perfectionism driven by shame or fear of failure;
• harsh self-criticism and a persistent sense of not being “enough”;
• relationship patterns rooted in early experiences of absence or inconsistency;
• difficulty accessing anger, grief, vulnerability, or desire;
• the ways difficult past experiences still shape how you live now;
• a sense of being stuck between insight and real change.

I also work with people moving through major transitions: emigration, shifts in identity, burnout, loss, changing relationships, disillusionment with a career. Many are carrying things they’ve normalised for years, without realising how deeply those experiences shaped how they relate to themselves and others.

Some come after more solution-focused or purely cognitive approaches that helped them understand themselves but didn’t reach the emotional, embodied level where patterns actually begin to shift.

Who it tends to suit

Not necessarily the most “psychologically fluent” people. Sometimes the most articulate stay disconnected from their actual feelings the longest. What matters more is a willingness to be honest — especially about what’s uncomfortable, contradictory, or hard to admit even to yourself.

It usually fits someone at least a little curious about their inner world, even if they start out sceptical or guarded. You don’t need to have it figured out. You need enough openness to slow down and look beneath the automatic reactions, rather than only trying to make a symptom go away as fast as possible.

This work also tends to resonate with people who want depth and complexity rather than rigid formulas or polished “self-improvement” language. It isn’t about optimising yourself into an ideal version of a person. It’s about a steadier, more honest, more compassionate relationship with your own inner life.

When this isn’t the right fit

Coaching with me is not therapy, and it’s not a substitute for medical or mental-health care. There are situations where clinical or medical support is what’s actually needed, and coaching would be the wrong call — when someone is:

• in acute crisis or needs urgent stabilisation;
• dealing with active thoughts of suicide or serious immediate risk;
• experiencing psychosis or severe, untreated mania;
• managing a serious substance dependency that needs dedicated treatment;
• unable to maintain basic day-to-day functioning or safety;
• primarily needing medical assessment for symptoms that may have a physiological cause;
• seeking formal assessments, reports, or evaluations of any kind.

In those situations, the responsible thing is to point you toward the right professional care — and I will.

There’s also a quieter mismatch. If the work is mainly a way to confirm that everyone else is the problem — without any willingness to look at your own patterns — it tends to stall quickly.

Fit matters more than people expect. Recognising when someone else, or a different kind of support, would serve you better is part of doing this responsibly.